


What's Your Name?

by PrincessMoon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 15:25:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessMoon/pseuds/PrincessMoon
Summary: When Zemo, impersonating the psychiatrist, interviews Bucky, Natasha watches her formerly lover tensely. Having him here without really having him, knowing that last time they saw each other it was Steve he recognized and not her, and knowing that he would probably never remember what she once meant to him, is mentally and emotionally taxing for her. When Zemo asks Bucky's name, Natasha is reminded of the first time she encountered the mysterious Soldier and asked him that same question, but got a different response.





	What's Your Name?

**Author's Note:**

> This post is having the same formatting issues as the last one, so the paragraph breaks are a little undesirable. Sorry!

“My name is Bucky.”  
It felt like my heart simultaneously burst and crumpled when he said those words. Such simple words, but they held so, so much meaning. So many times, he'd sit in a corner of my sleeping quarters, the small, dark room where almost all of our relationship developed and flourished, and try desperately to remember someone calling him something other than Soldier. Soldat. That had always been his name. It had started when I'd asked him what his real name was. Just that simple question had confused him. He'd never thought to wonder if he had a name – not that he could remember, anyway. He'd always accepted that he was simply Soldier.  
“What's your name?” I'd asked the first time we'd encountered each other outside of the training room. It was in the hour before we were supposed to go to sleep, in a forgotten stairwell. It was out of the way and secluded; no one ever passed through. I'd been coming here for years, with only one interruption, when the one girl I'd told about it had been “discarded.” For several months, it was filled with too much pain and regret, too many memories of the girl I'd called a friend, but eventually I simply had to escape the rest of the compound.  
As I'd been walking toward the stairwell, I'd sensed someone was following me. I assumed it must be one of the guards or the other girls, but when I turned, I saw his face, peeking out from behind a corner, watching me. His expression was stony and flat, but his eyes were filled with all kinds of feelings, many of which I had no name for. Curiosity was one. Intrigue. Conflict. Pain. I'd seen all of these and more in his eyes before – he was never the empty weapon they liked to consider him – but the pain never left his eyes, whether he was standing still and silent or sparring or giving us instruction or waiting for instruction himself. Usually it was accompanied by exhaustion, but now, as he watched me from the end of the hall, the exhaustion was just a faint echo, replaced by interest.  
I didn't know how to interpret that interest. Was he spying on me, making sure I wasn't breaking any rules? That couldn't be. If he were following instructions, there wouldn't be that light of childlike curiosity in his eyes. He would simply be focused on me, waiting for my next move. And I wouldn't have seen him behind me to begin with. He would have disappeared like the ghost we'd been told he was.  
Perhaps he was exploring the compound himself and happened upon me, stopping in surprise and shyness, if someone like him was capable of such a feeling. But there was something about his stance, so careful and yet ready to move into action at any second, that made me think that wasn't it, either.  
It occurred to me that he was following me to kill me, but that knowledge didn't have the impact on me that it should have. He was the most powerful weapon I'd ever encountered, but I wasn't afraid of him. In another person's eyes, that intrigue and intense focus he was staring at me with could have looked like the desire to kill, but that wasn't his desire now. I'd seen that look too many times in too many eyes to mistake this for it.  
My mind ran through these possibilities in a split second, but I knew what he was really doing. Maybe it was the way his eyes were so bright and focused on me, or the fact that he didn't hide from view as soon as I started turning, or the way his body was angled toward me, or maybe I was just self-centered and made a lucky guess, but I knew that he was following me of his own volition. Not following orders, not acting as the Winter Soldier, but acting as the person he was underneath that persona.  
My mouth opened, an involuntary response. Sloppy, I heard the head of the Red Room saying in her stone-cold voice. I'd shown an emotional reaction to someone who could be an enemy. The smart thing to do when you catch an unknown possible enemy following you is to do one of three things: 1. Kill them on sight; 2. Pretend to be a silly, lost girl who needs their help so that you can get close to them and figure out what their real agenda is; or 3. Disappear. But I did none of these things, could barely remember that I should, because I was getting lost in that childlike curiosity. I hadn't seen an expression like that in. . .I couldn't remember how long. I felt it piquing my own, something I'd worked hard to push down but hadn't quite erased from myself completely. I always used to ask too many questions. I'd been punished for it enough times that now I understood the ramifications that could have. It wasn't our job to wonder about whys or hows or whats or wheres or whens. If we started getting caught up in that, we wouldn't be able to focus on our delicate, complicated jobs. But those thoughts still crossed my mind, more than they should, even if I never said it aloud.  
I almost said something. I don't know what. But I thought better of it. He looked like he didn't want me to speak. So I acted instinctively. When no other predetermined course of action was appropriate, we were told to trust our instincts. We had been chosen for them. I turned away again and continued walking. I kept walking all the way to the stairwell and turned into it. I descended my usual three flights and then simply stopped and stood. I heard nothing the entire time, but I knew he was behind me. I could feel the same sense I'd had in the hall. I waited a few seconds, then slowly turned around again, and there he was, half a flight above me, watching, waiting. He had the same expression, but now it was brighter, his eyes practically glowing in the poorly lit stairwell.  
For a long moment, we simply stared at each other. I knew he was searching my face, but for what, I wasn't sure. As he gazed at me, his head began to tilt, his brow furrowing slightly in confusion. It was then that I realized that even he didn't know why he was following me. Something told me that he was starting to feel almost frantic, desperate to understand something, anything, and so I said the first thing that came to mind.  
“My name is Natalia.” He'd been instructing me and the other girls for almost a week now, but we still didn't know each other's names. I was referred to as Fourteen in training sessions. They didn't bother telling him our names; he had no reason to know them. His job was to either break us or make us unbreakable, and that had nothing to do with who we were. Numbers were easier to remember and organize than random names.  
His eyes widened, searching my face.  
“Natalia,” he said slowly, testing the name. His voice was surprisingly soft, almost warm. I'd noticed it the first time he spoke as my trainer; it had distracted me for a short second. I had been expecting someone much rougher, not the quiet, soft presence he had, and his voice was yet another part of that surprise. Now, when he was speaking quietly in the utter silence that surrounded us, not in his rushed instructor voice, it surprised me even more, and filled me with some feeling I couldn't describe, though I was sure I had felt it before, somehow. It was almost a shiver, a tingle, light and warm throughout my whole body.  
His eyes fixated on mine again. They were brighter now, his mouth slightly open in a confused kind of way. I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind, though I wasn't sure what kind of wheels those were. I waited for him to continue, maybe tell me his name, tell me why he had followed me, something. But he said nothing out loud, though his face said so much.  
He looked so lost, so desperate, like he was searching for something. After a few moments, I found myself taking a few steps toward him. He watched me as I moved and stopped at the base of the stairs. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I should be afraid, down here in this place no one ever passed through, with no one aware of where I was, with the most dangerous soldier in history. But this wide-eyed, pained man in front of me didn't seem like a soldier at all. Maybe the traumatized kind after they come home from war. Broken, bleeding, aching all over. I knew what it felt like, in some ways. I'd rarely been out on the field, but sometimes I felt like my entire life had been a battle.  
“What's your name?” I asked.


End file.
